The Obama administration won a major victory Tuesday when the Supreme Court upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to keep air pollution from Texas and other states from harming downwind neighbors.

The 6-2 decision was a defeat for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who had challenged the rule, and fellow objector Luminant Generating LLC, Texas’ biggest power producer. Other states and industries also opposed the rule.

Coincidentally, the court’s decision came on the same day when Luminant’s Dallas-based parent, Energy Future Holdings Corp., filed a long-expected petition for federal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

By overturning a lower court decision from 2012, the Supreme Court reinstated a rule requiring pollution cuts by 28 states, largely from power plants. The EPA had found in its Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that their pollution was boosting bad air downwind.

“Today’s ruling is a resounding victory for public health, especially for people living downwind from coal-fired power plants in other states,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said.

Abbott, a Republican running for governor against Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis, did not comment directly. His office issued a statement.

“The EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule is a job killer in Texas, and Attorney General Abbott will continue to fight back against this unlawful and overreaching regulation,” the statement said.

In 2011, when he filed Texas’ legal challenge of the rule, Abbott accused the EPA of imposing it in order “to advance its radical agenda” by crippling the Texas economy with power plant shutdowns.

The Davis campaign's communications director, Zac Petkanas, said the decision was a sign for Abbott to stop filing politically motivated lawsuits.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that Greg Abbott made a selfish and foolish decision to spend Texas taxpayers’ money on a case he could not win,” Petkanas said.

“Rather than look out for the best interests of hardworking Texans, Greg Abbott used his office and Texans’ money to promote himself.”

In 2011, power generator Luminant predicted coal-plant shutdowns if the rule went into effect. On Tuesday, it said it was disappointed by the decision but was unsure about its effects on operations.

“Luminant remains proud of and committed to upholding its legacy of meeting or outperforming all environmental laws, rules and regulations,” the company said Tuesday.

“The company will assess and determine its ultimate business and operational decisions based on the requirements of the final interstate transport rule when those requirements are fully known.”

Under Energy Future Holdings’ reorganization plan, Luminant and retailer TXU would be split off. Routine power operations are expected to continue.

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which the EPA issued in 2011, is the latest of several attempts by Republican and Democratic administrations to control wind-carried pollution.

Its opponents argued, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, that the EPA should have given states leeway to fix pollution before imposing its own requirements.

They also said the EPA had to tell states how much to cut and not just disapprove inadequate plans.

The Supreme Court called that an attempt to shift the burden of not harming neighbors, which Congress put squarely on the states, onto the EPA. Every state has known all along that it had a clear legal duty to avoid causing downwind harm, but some had not done so or had not done enough, the court said.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said such states were improperly passing problems to others.

“Left unregulated, the emitting or upwind state reaps the benefits of the economic activity causing the pollution without bearing all the costs,” she wrote.

“Conversely, downwind states to which the pollution travels are unable to achieve clean air because of the influx of out-of-state pollution they lack authority to control.”

The majority said the EPA was legally bound to write federal plans when state plans proved too weak.

Justices also affirmed the way the EPA assigned pollution cuts to the states. That was among Texas’ objections.

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